


Ascending Smoke

by luchia



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Headcanon, This is 10k of creepy black powder backstory basically, spoilers for Briarwood/Whitestone Arc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-08
Updated: 2016-08-08
Packaged: 2018-08-07 09:44:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7710319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luchia/pseuds/luchia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Percy can accept that he isn’t the first, or only, person to deal with Orthax.</p>
<p>He <i>will</i> be the last.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ascending Smoke

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is only partly edited and is therefore a little rough around the edges. It is also weird, because this is mostly me screaming "OKAY BUT WHAT IF-" about the bullet hell crew (aka anyone involved with gunpowder in critical role), but in fic format because I like writing and I like writing explosions most of all. Doctor Ripley is likely out of character, but that's not for lack of trying. Orthax will likely seem _very_ out of character but just go with it, you'll see why later.
> 
> (Also, I gave myself a word limit of 10k and a time limit of "the end of this weekend," and it's about 11:30 on Sunday, soooooo...)

(No.

_No._

The world blasts away from him, _existence_ rips out of Orthax, and in a split second, in one infinitesimal moment of bad luck while facing upstart fools who dared to fight him, he is nothing. His power explodes into nothingness, the world slips away from him, and now, _here_ , Orthax is nothing but the shadowy mist of a centuries-old daydream.

And so, he must be patient. He must wait, powerless, for the day when his particular brand of destruction would even _exist_. He would wait, and his domain would come into the world, and his power would come with it. Some day. Some day, he would rise again, an explosion of raw wrath and vengeance, a chemical chaos to rival volcanoes and hurricanes.

Some day, _some day_ , he would come back into his rightful power. He only needs to wait for this material plane to mature, until its denizens can even begin to comprehend him. He needs to be _patient._

But patience has never sat well with Orthax.)

\---

Percy dreams of black smoke.

By now, dreams of smoke and whispers have become commonplace to the point they’ve lost any true impact, really. The days of Percy waking up in a cold sweat are long gone, replaced with a put-upon sigh directed towards his repetitive nightmares. So, he resigns himself to yet another Orthax-related dream, settling down on his dream-created workshop’s bench.

Except there is no bench. There’s no warm oddly-lit workshop that feels like _home._ There is blurring distorted laughter rippling through the air, and the air chokes at him, somehow both freezing his skin and burning his lungs – the smoke pours up from the ground in furious gouts and sleek ribbons of black, ice and snow bite down from the swirling white-out clouds screaming wind against him like tiny blades, and Percy coughs, grabs for his mask, but there’s no time, there’s _no time-_

Through the black and white and silver swirl of elements ahead of him, he can barely hear the crack of a pistol in time for the bullet that slices through his chest to make any sort of sense. Percy chokes, and coughs, and can’t breathe, can barely keep his eyes open to see smoke coalescing into a familiar figure. Orthax swoops towards him, but even the demon’s form has trouble staying solid in the monochrome blizzard. The only color is Percy’s bright red blood.

_You’re a fool to think you could kill me, to think you could stop me_ , Orthax snarls into Percy’s quickly-clouding mind, and there’s another figure in the distance coming closer, with the darkness around it, but he can’t make out anything else because Orthax’s hand wraps around his neck and drags Percy up to his eye level. _You weren’t the first and you won’t be the last and I will_ destroy you _-_

“Wait! Wait, my lord, please, find a shred of patience,” someone shouts out, and Percy can feel his body go rigid in an automatic response to Ripley’s voice. She’s wreathed in Orthax’s shadows. “Let me ask him questions. Let me use him before you take your vengeance.”

Everything is so cold. They stand in a long burned-out village, the ground beneath charred black buildings still smoldering, and it’s _so cold_.

Orthax says something, Ripley speaks, and Percy hears none of it, Percy tries to clutch at the hole next to his heart but his arms don’t have the strength, he chokes, he coughs, and…nothing.

Darkness.

He fights off the urge to scream, and fails, lurching upright in bed with his loaded gun pointed at the bedroom door in a shaking grip he can barely maintain from the amount of sweat clinging to his palms, his forehead, his _everything_. He’s awake now. He’s awake, and it was just another dream.

Vox Machina has an unspoken policy of ignoring any nightmares or anything heard muttered in a party member’s sleep. Percy’s nightmares are usually very _quiet_ , though, so the rest of Vox Machina calls over the earrings from their own rooms to ask if he’s okay. Percy clears his throat, forcing himself to sound as normal as humanly possible as he replies, “Yes, yes, I’m fine, just a particularly vivid nightmare. I apologize for waking you, please shut up and go back to sleep.”

A few moments of bickering cover the problem of whether or not Percy is in fact an evil Percy clone and the real Percy is getting brutally murdered, but the general consensus is that they’re all too worn out from the day to help him even if they tried, so Percy’s in charge of keeping himself alive until sunrise.

It’s fair.

Percy’s always believed that his dreams and nightmares are the result of his mind trying to subconsciously confront the things Percy can’t even touch in reality for fear of breaking, or breaking _more_ , at least. But this dream felt different. He’s dreamed of dying before, of course, but it was so _vivid_. He could taste the ice and ash, could feel blood swelling against his tongue.

And above all else, Percy is struck by the idea that Orthax has previous victims who have done who knows what, and it’s highly likely that Doctor Ripley would dive into a deal with Orthax with gleeful abandon if offered – and Orthax _would_ offer. If he isn’t dead.

Percy can accept that he isn’t the first, or only, person to deal with Orthax.

But he _will_ be the last.

-

Keyleth shows up right when Percy finishes screwing in one of the new lenses for his mask, a set which hopefully won’t fog up or freeze over so quickly. There’s no way to entirely avoid the problem, of course, but improvement is infinitely better than accepting the status quo and resigning himself to the idea there’s a problem he can’t try to fix. It might not work – it usually doesn’t, actually – but at least he _tries._

“So,” Keyleth begins, as chronically awkward as ever. “How’d you sleep?”

There are so many responses he could give, but this is Keyleth, so Percy sighs and says, “I really am fine. I just had a particularly nasty nightmare. Or I _think_ it was a nightmare, at least.”

“You think?” Keyleth echoes. “What does that mean?”

“Have you ever had…visions? Prophetic dreams?” He fights back a grimace at the way Keyleth’s eyes go wider and wider. “It’s just that my dream gave me a…a warning, I suppose. Is that possible? Or do I sound completely insane?”

“Kind of, yeah,” Keyleth says, but sits down on one of the Safe To Sit On Stools (they’re all painted bright blue). “But at the same time, if you were gonna have a prophetic dream or see the future or something, this is probably how it would happen. What did you see?”

He doesn’t want to start off with Orthax potentially returning, because that will worry her, and he doesn’t want to tell her about the dying part, as that would worry her even _more_ , so Percy settles on the partially honest answer of, “I saw Doctor Ripley. She was in a burned-down town, and there was a blizzard of some sort, and I feel like I’m supposed to…no, I don’t just feel it, I _need_ to go there.”

Keyleth frowns, watching Percy’s face intently as she says, “Huh. And I’m supposed to believe the screaming was from that?”

“I’d certainly like it if you did,” Percy says, which doesn’t help alleviate the concern in her eyes in any way, so he looks back down at his mask. “I may have died at the end of the dream.”

“Okay. So let me get this straight, you had a probably prophetic dream where you followed Ripley to some creepy town in a blizzard, where she _killed you_ , and you think you need to go follow that dream?” Keyleth asks. “The dream where you _die?”_

“Put that way, I sound like an idiot.”

“Yeah, Percy, you really do,” Keyleth says, and tilts her head to look him firmly in the eye. “Listen to me for a second, alright? Were _we_ in the dream? Was Vox Machina there at your side?” Percy shakes his head. “Right, so then we already know things will go differently if you aren’t alone! We’re a team. We’re _family._ If you really do think you need to do this, and you think you need to go to this town, we can go. But we go together. Okay? We all help each other out, and we’re so much stronger as a team.”

She has an excellent point. But at the same time, there’s something inside of him screaming to keep his friends as far away from this as possible, and that something reminds him of how many _barrels_ of black powder Ripley bought in Vasselheim, of torture and laughter and toxic fumes and smoke curling into Orthax and around Ripley and _inside him_ , and his friends dying because of him, _again_.

And if Percy is only _one_ of Orthax’s instruments, the last in who knows how long of a chain, there’s no telling what could be waiting.

But, she has an _excellent_ point.

“True,” Percy says, and gives her a half-hearted smile. “Still, I feel as if this could…” He pauses, and then sighs, even partial honesty visibly weighing down his shoulders. “I know myself, and I know Ripley, and it’s going to get ugly on both sides of this fight. _Very_ ugly. I don’t want you to see that.”

“I’ve seen it before,” Keyleth reminds him.

“That’s why I don’t want you to see it,” Percy says. It took a _painful_ amount of time for Keyleth to relax around him again, for any sort of friendship to settle back between them, and he’s well aware that one of the reasons they’re okay now is they literally exorcised a demon out of him – quite convenient when you’re looking to excuse someone’s  less-than-upright behavior. If Orthax is alive, that excuse goes away.

It’s always been Percy. He had help along the way, but every action was by choice, and every death was by his own design. And Keyleth…well. Keyleth could have trouble with that.

“Listen, vision of the future or not, you can’t know what will happen if you find Ripley,” Keyleth says, because yes, this will certainly resolve itself with a nice tea party, they’ll sit down for a civil conversation where they talk about their feelings. “Don’t go running into this expecting blood to go flying everywhere.”

Percy waves a hand through the air, trying to brush the tension away because he shouldn’t have brought that up anyway. “No, it’s fine, you’re right. I do always think of the worst case scenario instead of the most likely, and we should table that end of things for now anyway. Let’s focus on getting there in the first place.”

Keyleth perks up immediately, and with absolutely no hesitation, not even a _question_ of whether or not this is going to happen, Vox Machina gears up to head through a tree and towards the cold tugging in Percy’s chest – a mountain range near the territory Rimefang once ruled over.

They’re barely a hundred feet from the tree when black smoke erupts out of Percy’s chest, roaring around him, lifting him off the ground and carrying him into unconsciousness.

\----

(And step one, step _one_ , takes _decades_. It takes decades to sneak into this world and plant the mind-numbingly simple idea of _what if I mixed these things together just so…?_

It takes an infuriating amount of time for someone to do it without blowing their head off. Even after he gets one of them to write down a recipe so precise it measures down to the _grain_ , concern and self-preservation slow his progress to a pace even more agonizing than when Orthax was trying to be patient. No, he needs invention, he needs _progress_ , and he doesn’t have the power to spread out among multiple people. Not yet. He needs to choose more carefully. He needs more power.

But at his core, Orthax is destruction. He is explosions and burning wrath and the smoke that chokes lone survivors, and his nature will never change. So, he refines his criteria: for someone to be any sort of use to Orthax, they must be useful. They must be _capable._ They must be intelligent, desperate, and absolutely _ruthless_.)

\-----

Percy blinks up at the great sifting darkness that is Orthax, and dream or reality or anything in between, his reaction would be the same. Percy grumbles his way into a sitting position and works on finding his glasses. “Orthax. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

_Make me a better offer,_ Orthax whispers. The black curls of his form drifting intimately close to Percy.

“I’d need a bit more information than that,” Percy says, unimpressed. His glasses are resting unharmed in a pocket, and when he puts them on, looking up at Orthax, the dark shadow bursts into Percy’s mind.

He blinks, and looks down at Doctor Anna Ripley, who in turn glances up towards Percy-who-is-Orthax with a burning ambition that makes Percy want to vomit. “What would you ask of me, my lord?” Ripley asks. “My services are yours.”

“And what services could she provide for you?” Percy asks, forcing as much disdain into his voice as possible. Pretentious arrogance can cover fear fairly effectively, when needed. It also gives him time to _think_ – insulting people comes automatically, after all. “She’s a subpar inventor with no original ideas, let alone any sense of style. Ripley already proved she can’t handle this when she blew off her own hand trying to work out the _basics_ of firearms.”

Orthax looms over Percy, head tilting to the side. _Subpar invention is better than nothing._

“Perhaps you should examine your priorities first. Would you rather have subpar invention, or another soul?” Percy asks, and gestures towards the frozen scene – and yes, there’s the same dream town behind Ripley, snow and smoke and black skeletons of buildings. “I have a proposal for you. Let me fight her. If she wins, you take my soul and she’s yours to command. If I win, you take _her_ soul.”

_And you would be mine to command in her stead,_ Orthax says.

“No. However, I’d be willing to enter into negotiations,” Percy says, keeping out the fact that those negotiations would predominately cover how and when Percy would eviscerate even the _memory_ of Orthax from the world. If Orthax can roll Percy into a deal he didn’t understand, Percy is more than allowed to pay him back in kind. It brings a sharp smile across his face. “No promises, but…well. There could be more than a little mutual benefit in a more _balanced_ partnership, don’t you think?”

For a moment, not even a heartbeat, Percy could swear the smoke of Orthax snaps into sharp intense focus, a looming humanoid figure with billowing brown-red hair and a scarred face ripped through with a vicious grin of elation. With a single startled blink, he’s back to the smoke and shadows Percy is used to. _You will negotiate,_ Orthax repeats, a deep burning satisfaction rumbling out of the darkness. _We’ll wait and see, Percival._

 And when Percy’s eyes open, all he sees is snow and stone. The mountain range bites up into the gray-clouded sky ahead of him, and the rest of Vox Machina is nowhere to be seen. There are no trees beyond the dregs of a forest sprayed against the shallower ridge of the mountain Percy’s somehow been sent to.

“Well, that’s a new trick,” Percy mutters, more than a little bit _displeased_ knowing his once-resident smoke demon is now capable of teleporting people. Is that even something a demon can do? Or did Percy manage to blank out the past few hours – but no, there are no tracks in the snow. He simply…appeared.

Not good.

Smoke rises in the distance. It’s not the slinking black ashes of Orthax, but the white-gray of a healthy fire, barely discernible against the clouds, and it’s _something_ , so Percy starts trudging through the snow in that direction.

For hours, Percy fights through the snow, until he comes upon what’s either a large homestead or a very small village. His pants are soaked, slowly-melting snow has crept into his boots, clumps of powder cling to his coat, and it leaves him in an undignified half-tripping flail of anxious movement towards the squashed-down snow path that leads to the largest building.

There’s a very high chance this is a dangerous place full of cannibals or something equally horrible, but it is cold, and worth the chance. Percy swats off as much of the snow as he can and walks straight up to the front door, knocking heavily against the wood as he calls, “Hello?” A scuffling noise sneaks out from behind the door. “I apologize for the intrusion but if I could just maybe dry out for a bit-”

“Did he send you?” an unfamiliar man shouts, voice deep and nervous.

Percy frowns at the door. “I…no? I don’t think so. Who is he?”

“Then why are you here?” the man shouts.

“I’m trying to track down a very bad person,” Percy says. “She came this way, I believe. Have you seen a one-handed woman-”

The door swings open so quickly Percy barely manages to dodge out of the way and avoid getting smacked in the face with seven feet of heavy timber. There’s not much time to stumble, either, as a hand grabs onto Percy’s sleeve and yanks him into the building, door slamming shut behind him. “Shh, _shh_ , he could be watching,” the man snaps at Percy, and then backs away.

He’s old, and since the man’s a full-blooded elf, he must be _extremely_ old. Despite the deep wrinkles and the sharply-shorn white hair, the man’s eyes are fierce and intent.

“Who is he?” Percy asks again.

The man mutters something under his breath, and then turns away, motioning for Percy to follow him over to the fireplace. Percy is more than happy to comply, watching as the man takes a seat. “It’s hard to explain,” the man says, huddling in on himself just a little. “But he lives over the ridge, in the wreckage, Coldcinders. He _watches_ , and he sends his people.” He looks up sharply. “And I try to stop them. Usually I can stop them, but _her_ , the one you’re hunting, she already has the smoke to her. It would’ve been suicide for me – but _you_ , you’ve got the look to you. Can you stop her?”

“I can, and will,” Percy says, and holds up a hand, stopping the man before he can rattle off partially-comprehendible commentary again. “Allow me to ask you some questions. First, what is your name? Who are you?”

“I’m Halamar. I’m the last of us alive, the ones who walked out and didn’t keep walking,” he says, which tells Percy almost nothing, but thankfully he continues, stomping one hard frustrated foot onto the floor. “It’s – he destroyed the mine, he destroyed Silverlake and turned it into the tenth hell, the Coldcinders, and I knew people would come for it, I _knew_ , and I stayed to stop them best I can. The other man hasn’t come back since Silverlake’s last day, so it’s left to me.” Halamar makes a sweeping motion with his hand that means absolutely nothing to Percy. “We set up the wards, a lot of them. And then, it’s left to me.”

“Let me see if I understand this, Halamar. _He_ destroyed a place called Silverlake, where you and others lived, and instead of leaving with the rest of the inhabitants, you stayed in case _he_ came back-”

“Yes, but no,” Halamar says, makes a frustrated noise, and then points at Bad News, still tightly strapped to Percy’s back. “That. _Them._ The one-handed woman had one too, smaller, and the boy, what was his name? The boy who destroyed Silverlake had something _close_ , but bigger. Much bigger.”

Percy’s eyebrows rise. A gun even bigger than Bad News is _not_ a good thing. “Do you remember anything about the boy?” he asks.

Halamar runs a hand down his face. “It happened too fast. The mine…he’d put it everywhere, in with the coal, in the shafts, it was _everywhere_ , and it killed _everyone_. It still burns, even now. The lake of Silverlake vanished – it was like a volcano. When I dug out, I only saw the dead, and the boy, and _him_.”

“Does _he_ happen to be a creature made of black smoke, possibly shaped a bit like a bird?” Percy asks.

Carefully, Halamar nods. “Him. Yes.”

“And the smoke demon sends people here? To the…Coldcinders?” Percy asks, frowning. “Is that the mine?” Again, Halamar nods. “How often do people come?”

“There’s no schedule, there’s no – sometimes two in a day, sometimes not one for years and years. But I get most of them,” Halamar says, and makes the sweeping motion again. “The wards, they keep _him_ out, and almost all of them come to me, come out of the cold. And the ones I miss? I know I missed them because there’s another explosion, or a body to clean out of the snow.” The smallest of smirks tilts onto Halamar’s face. “That boy, he was no idiot. We didn’t know until it was too late for a reason.” The smirk fades into something sad, almost regretful. “He was…it wasn’t right. None of it was right.”

“How long have you been alone up here killing everyone you meet?” Percy asks.

Halamar shakes his head, looking into the fire. “Don’t know. The trees get taller, the snow melts and rises again…hm. Maybe fifty years?”

No wonder Halamar has trouble communicating if he’s been a murderous hermit for half a century. Still, their goals are most assuredly aligned – it’s enough assurance for Percy to (slightly) drop his guard and start attempting to dry out. “I see. Well, seeing as this is your territory, let’s talk about maps and terrain, shall we?”

\----

(Eventually, Orthax finds his perfect target.

He’s young and angry and lost in his own head, and there’s something in his mind that’s not quite right. He fits all the criteria. His family is dead and the world doesn’t even  _care_ , those responsible cover it up and profit as if nothing happened, and he’s powerless, and cold, and _lost_ , and entirely perfect for Orthax’s purposes.

He’s  _clever_  too, ingenious, assembling pulleys and carts and other systems that make the Silverlake Mine a bastion of efficiency and innovation. But there’s only so much he can do for safety, and cave-ins are inevitable and kill his father, and his brothers, and his cousin. He watches as the frantic overseer reaches for one of the great hammers that sit near the mine’s entrance as his mother screams, shrill and frantic and sobbing,  _where are they, what did you do, why did you send them in, why did you send them in, give them back give them back give them back give them-_  and her screams are cut off by the heavy metal that  _he forged_. It slams into the side of her head, and his mother falls, skull caved in and eyes wide and so still.

“This didn’t happen,” they tell him.

“You saw nothing,” they tell him.

“Nothing happened, you saw nothing,  _or else,”_  the supervisor, and the guards, and the lord who stands above it all his at him, over and over. And so he stays silent, but he burns. He _boils_.

And then, he dreams of smoke.

_Vengeance,_  Orthax whispers to him.

“Yes,” he says.

_Retribution,_  Orthax whispers.  _Make them pay. Destroy them._

“Yes,” he breathes out, and reaches into the smoke. It curls around his skin, burning like hot cinders. “Yes, please. What do you want?”

_We want the same thing - their souls,_  Orthax whispers, because souls are the next best thing to worship.  _We want vengeance. Destroy them, without mercy._

“Yes,” he says, and the smoke wraps around his entire body, claiming him. “Please, yes. But how? I’m just me, I can’t –  _how?”_

_With this,_  Orthax tells him, and the smoke turns into black powder.  _This is your path, and this is your wrath. This is your purpose, Victor._

“Yes.  _Yes,”_  Victor sobs, and his shaking body breathes the darkness in. His eyes flutter shut, and he fades back into consciousness, wholly belonging to Orthax.

And really, Orthax isn’t an optimistic proto-deity by nature, but even he has to admit that seemed to go incredibly well.)

\----

Silverlake and Coldcinders are the same place, it turns out. The cause of the name change is obvious – the water is gone, for one. All that remains is the ever-smoldering ground, and what used to be a small lake is now a gaping smoking crater. It is also very cold, far colder than back at Halamar’s murder-homestead, thanks to the wind that slices through the crater and the charred remains of a single corner of the old town.

Overall, it’s spot on for what Percy saw in his dream. At least he had a bit of time to prepare for the real encounter, and his mask is already on, ready for the toxic fumes that had choked him so quickly before. It makes shouting more difficult, but it would be of little use in the gusts of snow that would undoubtedly rip the sound away before it could ever reach deeper into what used to be Silverlake.

So, Percy settles on aiming his pistol at the sky and firing a single shot. The crack of the bullet streaks through the crater-valley, audible even over the wind.

Considering there are (probably) only two people in the world capable of making that noise, he’s fairly certain his message is received.

Time passes.

Time passes.

It could be anywhere from minutes to hours, tension and an obscured sky skewing any reliable perception of time. But she comes.

Doctor Anna Ripley steps forward wearing a heavy fur-lined cloak over leather armor, a bland black mask over her nose and mouth. Glass and copper goggles cover her eyes. Her brown-and-iron hair, now cut to chin-length, whips through the wind as she walks out of the smoke and snow. Percy can barely make out the leather-wrapped hilt of a gun waiting at her hip, and the silver of her extremely boring but functional prosthetic hand.

Even with her face so thoroughly covered, Percy can read the tense half-smile in her eyes as she says, “Percival. I’m glad you could join us.”

“I’m here to kill you, not join you,” Percy tells her, because apparently he has to state the obvious – perhaps Orthax is eating her mind. He remembers her being an intelligent woman, albeit uncreative and _evil_.

Ripley makes an amused _hmm_ noise behind the mask, and looks away from Percy, across what remains of Silverlake. “You’re a seeker of knowledge, aren’t you? A lover of information, a bringer of destruction, you’re ever curious about how things are put together and how they break apart. That’s what this place is for. It’s the laboratory for our kind.”

Despite how very much Percy wants to just fucking _kill her already_ , he finds himself frowning, and talking. He shouldn’t be having a discussion with her, he should be _killing her_ , but Percy still says, “From what I’ve heard, it’s nothing but a mine blown up by a madman.”

“Most of it exploded, yes, but the shrine is still here,” Ripley says, and gestures somewhere behind her. “Come look at it.”

“I disrespectfully decline,” Percy says, and reaches for his gun.

She sighs, then. She sighs like he’s a foolish little teenager again, trying so hard to be brave in the face of so much horror and failing, _breaking_ , and his hand stills. She motions again, and turns around, walking away with her back wide open for attack…and Percy follows. He shouldn’t, but he does.

They walk through the ashes and smoke and snowstorm, deeper into the valley, until Ripley stops in front of a large hole in the ground. There’s a black wooden ladder sticking out of it, likely scavenged out of the town’s charred remains, and Ripley descends without hesitation, and Percy _keeps following_ , down the ladder and into the darkness only broken by a flickering light trapped inside a glass sphere that Ripley pulls out of her cloak. Her single hand is occupied this way, and it would be an _excellent_ time to shoot her in the back of her head, but instead he follows her through a tunnel, and another tunnel.

And then, they reach the shrine.

It’s nothing but a very large room filled with black powder, one unlit red candle sitting on a dark table in the center. Blast scars mar the walls, streaks of smoke and what appear to be small chunks of bone embedded into the walls and ceiling – the remains of unlucky worshipers, most likely.

“Very impressive. I’m sure the resident smoke demon is thrilled to have people explode here every now and then,” Percy says, and his body walks straight up to the candle. His hands grab the edges of the small table, and he stares down at the unlit wick, which is a _terrible_ idea, why is he doing this?

Ripley moves behind him, sets the glass-contained flame on the table, and Percy can feel her pull Bad News from its rightful place on his back. “Do you really still think he’s just a demon?”

“Yes.”

“Even with the power he’s displayed to get you here? You _still_ think Orthax is some common fiend?” Ripley asks. He can hear her looking over the gun, the gentle clicks and ticks of pieces touched by an inexperienced hand. “I’d think ego alone would have you believe he’s more than that, Percival. Tell me if your friends are coming for you.”

“I don’t know,” Percy admits.

She laughs at that, soft and almost sweet. “Oh, Percy. You poor thing. Take the mask off and we can begin – set it there on the table, yes. Now, hands back in position, and say your prayers to Orthax.”

Percy doesn’t pray, he never has, but he _must_ , so Percy stares down at the unlit candle and says, “Dear Orthax, please disappear back into whatever hell you came from and take Ripley with you.”

“Not even a hint of gratitude? Look at what he _gave you_ , Percival,” Ripley says, and rounds the table, Bad News cradled in her arms like a very long and lethal baby. “Don’t take that for granted. What would you be without him, some broken wandering tinkerer? I’ve followed your work for some time now, and you should be on your knees weeping in gratitude to Orthax for everything he’s done through you.”

He doesn’t want to, he _doesn’t want to,_ but Percy drops to his knees. Black powder puffs up from the ground when he hits the floor. He sees nothing but his mask and the candle and Ripley behind it all, and he is going to _destroy her_ right after he bites out, “Thank you, Orthax.”

“Good,” she says, and sets Bad News on the table just long enough to pull flint and steel out of a pouch on her belt, which she places in one of Percy’s unresisting hands. With a satisfied noise, she picks Bad News up again and heads towards the door.

As she steps out, Doctor Ripley says, “Light the candle, Percival.”

She closes the door.

Percy gets back to his feet. Black powder covers everything from his waist down, and he shakes, and he watches his own body in frozen horror as his hands move, slow and efficient, towards the candle. Flint in one hand, steel in the other, positioned perfectly, oh _fuck_ – no, no, he can do this. One spark and then he makes sure to keep the flame as steady and powder-free as possible.

He stops his hands barely long enough to pull off his gloves, and one spark, _one spark_ , he can barely breathe or think but he _can_ do this. He’s shaking, but he can do this.

_Jenga,_ he thinks, continues to panic, and _strikes_.

The world explodes.

\----

(Orthax made a mistake with his choice. And that mistake was failing to account for _money._

Victor has no money. All the materials he can get his hands on are pilfered from the mine or the town, and what little inheritance the boy got from his entire family dying was spent on the _core_ ingredient, making barrel after barrel of beautifully concocted black powder – the boy is an artist when it comes to chemicals. He would’ve been sought out across the world for his finesse, back in Orthax’s original world.

He is also…unhinged. It gets worse with every interaction, Victor’s spectacular twisted brain consumed a fragment at a time with every look at Orthax – the curse of anyone interacting with a god from the far realms, it turns out, no matter the circumstances of his arrival. But when he tries to draw away, Victor is there, saying, “No, wait, wait the powder, the _powder_ , the powder and the power and the _revenge_ , I only have the powder, is there more? There’s more, yes? Yes? _Yes?_ That’s what the expensive things are for!”

In only a few months, Victor has turned into… _this._

The boy sits crouched on the floor of his family’s empty house, scribbling frantic nonsense on a paper he stole from who knows where. He can’t read. Orthax is fairly sure he needs glasses as well, but opticians are hard to come by in the high mountains at a remote coal mine. Victor has achieved amazing things, for a human, and did all of it by instinct.

There is a limit to what Victor can do. His superb powder surplus grows and grows and grows until he’s sneaking barrels into the less-used passages of the mines, uncertain of what to do with it, and Orthax is satisfied with the amount. Quite satisfied with the product.

He is not satisfied with Victor’s engineering abilities. Anything delicate, anything _small_ , he can’t do.

On the positive side of things, he manages to lead Victor through the creation of a few rudimentary bombs and one spectacularly large, lethal, and impractical gun-cannon hybrid. Victor’s single test fire caused an avalanche that killed three people. Orthax was elated, but Victor dug a hole and buried his gun-cannon as deep as he could manage without someone noticing.

_Destruction. Vengeance,_ Orthax hisses at Victor with every shovelful of half-frozen dirt. _Merciless retribution!_

“Yes, yes, of course, but the other people here! Someone could get _hurt_ ,” Victor whisper-shouts back at him, a halfhearted attempt at not looking completely insane. “The powder is enough, yes. It’s enough.”

_It’s never enough, there’s no such thing as enough,_ Orthax whispers, because he remembers _before_ , remembers _home_ , remembers lines of hundreds of soldiers with firearms and each one of them had a piece of Orthax inside of them, shaking, trembling, praying _please, Orthax, please let my aim be true, let my bullet fell my enemy, let me live into the next day and my gun fire cleanly_ and he had reveled in the _power_ , smoke and ashes and fire. Hundreds of souls came to him every hour, tens of thousands of prayers in a _moment_ when one of the Great Bombs went off, and now he stands with Victor, _just_ Victor, who thinks the powder is enough.

So, he curls around Victor’s scared impressionable form, and whispers, _The powder is enough. Now, you must use it. Use it for your righteous vengeance._

“Yes, yes, it’s time, _yes,”_ Victor says, and his body drags itself towards the secret crevices and forgotten rooms in the Silverlake Mine. “How? When? _How_?”

_Like this, Victor. Like this,_ Orthax whispers, and shows him a room of black, with one softly-glowing red candle.)

\----

Fire consumes the room, a blast of reds and yellows and heat, a searing burn of _power_ that leaves Percy slamming into the surface of the blackened table, teeth scraping into the wood as he screams. His coat bursts into flames, his legs are aflame, and Percy is going to die. He’s going to die, and he doesn’t _want to_. Not like this.

Percy has enough sense left to at least try and pat out the flames on his legs and coat, because the fire is sticking to the walls and ceiling for some reason, leaving the smallest of pockets of searing heat but no actual flames beyond those still burning from the first explosion. And he was _good_ , he was _precise_ , he should’ve avoided this but it happened somehow regardless of the care Percy took to avoid this _exact_ situation, damn it.

As he swats at the burning parts of his own body, a shadow grows in the flames. Dark tendrils of smoke leak out, and Percy goes very still, because there’s more smoke. And more smoke.

And then, there is a hand with unnaturally long fingers. Smoke twirls off every fingertip, and a puff is released with every move of the emerging elbow, and foot, and _shoulder_ -

“No,” Percy whispers, and the world doesn’t care. Orthax slides out from the walls of the burning room, the burning _shrine_ , but it isn’t entirely the Orthax Percy remembers. His body is clearly defined, smoke-covered black arms and legs, skeletally thin beneath the strange ashen armor, almost like a strange aristocratic uniform, black iron epaulets with sweeping twirls of designs reminiscent of curling smoke and elaborate embroidery.

The biggest difference is the head, because it’s not a bird after all. It’s a mask, eerily identical to Percy’s, and the head beneath has long hair the color of dried blood, a brown-red that billows out with Orthax’s ever-pulsing smoke.

Orthax moves forward, every press of his foot against the ground hitting Percy like Bad News’s recoil, until Orthax stands across the table from Percy.

_“Finally,”_ Orthax breathes out. The words echo out of the fire, a sharp crack-hiss accompanying the familiar deep voice. _“My chosen. My genius fool. Finally, we truly meet.”_

“I don’t understand,” Percy says, wholly honest, because he has no fucking clue what is going on. “What _are_ you?”

_“I am the god you will bring into the world,”_ Orthax says, which is idiotic because Percy makes bad choices, yes, but even he’s not stupid enough to be the devil’s midwife. _“Your rejection hurt, but I can forgive – you did not know. You thought I was some lowly demon, and you showed strength removing that splinter of me. But now you know the true importance of this, of_ me _, and you will return to my service.”_

“No, I won’t,” Percy says.

Orthax shakes his head. _“Again, you fail to understand me. Everything I would have of you, you’ve already given: bring my weapons into the world, show them to the world so that others can copy the invention, and mercilessly destroy anything that stands in your way. In choosing this, you don’t reject me, you reject_ yourself.”

“That is absolutely correct,” Percy says, and glances towards where the door used to be. There’s nothing but fire, of course, so he sighs and looks back to Orthax. “Are you going to kill me if I keep saying no? Because if so, can we just get on with it?”

Wordless, Orthax reaches up with one disturbingly long-fingered hand and pulls the bird-like mask off, throwing it onto the table, but Percy barely notices because Orthax’s face is Percy’s face. The face beneath is Percy, if he’d had acid burn the left side of his face. His own eyes stare down at Percy. His own lips twist into an unimpressed sneer. _“I have put too much work into you to allow you the coward’s way out, Percival. I’ve been with you for too long to think that your own death would have any persuasive impact. Those you love, certainly, but you wouldn’t so much as drink bad tea to save yourself.”_

Percy has to bite his lower lip to keep from arguing that, because he has _absolutely_ drank bad tea for the greater good – repeatedly, even – but that’s not the point here. “Then you should let leave, because I’m not going to agree to this. I’m not this, or I’m not _letting_ myself be this, and I won’t change my mind no matter how much fire you blast into this room.”

_“I gave you everything you ever wanted. Why do you hate me?”_ Orthax asks.

“You put my _sister’s name_ on the gun!” Percy shouts.

_“She betrayed you.”_

Percy glares, and says, “She’s my _sister._ ”

_“That means nothing. Family bonds are irrelevant in the face of their actions – if they harm you, if they try to_ kill you, _it is your right to fight back,”_ Orthax says, and Percy hates how easily he can understand Orthax’s point of view. An abusive parent has no excuse and should be dealt with accordingly. A sister who betrays you…brainwashed or not, Percy can see the brutally straightforward logic of it.

“Cassandra is my sister,” Percy tells him, because there’s no way to explain. There’s no point in trying.

Orthax shakes his head, and thrusts his hand into the flames. When he pulls back out, his oversized hand holds a beautiful and elaborate brass gun with a slightly flared muzzle. _“This was to be your next project.”_

And damn him back to his bullet hell, but it’d better be the both of them going because Percy sits up, eyebrows rising, and moves towards the gun in Orthax’s outstretched hand. “ _Oh._ What is-”

The gun vanishes in a puff of smoke.

_Damn it._

Orthax is smiling at him, now. The most terrifying thing is how sincerely _fond_ he looks, because Percy can read his own face. He’s practiced smiling in the mirror too many times to ignore what a true smile looks like. _“Ah yes, Percy, I see the pain of coming back to me would be too much to bear.”_

With a sigh, Percy glances back at the wall of fire that also should have the door in it. “…Is this a decision I need to make immediately, or can I think it over?”

_“I could give you time,”_ Orthax says, which Percy did not expect at all, and reaches down to slide his own mask back on, hiding the burned-Percy face beneath. _“But you walk a dangerous path, Percival. I would not have your life at risk without me.”_

Percy can’t read Orthax’s intentions, beyond that there’s nothing hostile – he _seems_ honest, but it’s _Orthax._ Despite what others may say, Percy knows better than to trust smoke vengeance demons, or whatever Orthax is these days. “Give me that time, then.”

_“There is another deal to still be upheld,”_ Orthax says.

“Ripley.”

Orthax nods. _“She has more of my power within her, she allows me deeper within than you,”_ he says. _“I would have this change before you face her.”_

“Rest assured, I can take care of Anna,” Percy says, and tries to meet the obscured burned eyes beneath the mask. “I can do this alone.”

_“You are mine, Percival, despite your refusal to accept me. You are never alone,”_ Orthax says, and steps back through the flames with his satisfactory parting shot.

The moment Orthax is gone, there’s a flash of light, and Percy dives onto the floor just in time for the fire to roar into the center of the room, sucked into the hungry red candle atop the table. The already intolerable heat intensifies, and Percy wheezes, feels his skin blister, feels his clothing burst into flames and his hair catch on fire and the metal of his glasses _burns_ , searing grooves into his skin-

And then it’s gone.

Percy is fine, albeit coated in sweat, clothing soaked and salt clinging to his skin in some places, and the only fire that remains is the small flickering flame of the red candle.

Every part of him is shivering in the once-again chill temperatures returning to turn his sweat into ice, and he stands on shaky legs, bracing himself on the small blackened table, staring down at the candle’s cheery flame. It dances left and right, as if the world is a delightful place.

Percy blows it out, grabs his mask, and starts to stumble his way out of the room and into the tunnels.

He has a doctor to kill.

\----

(The explosion, oh, the _explosion_ , it’s a glorious inferno of death that Orthax sucks in with the joy he used to find in his Great Bombs and black powder wars of attrition. Victor’s vengeance is achieved in a glorious hurricane of flames and destruction. One hundred and forty-eight people die, and yes, Victor, yes, the black powder _was_ enough.

_More,_ Orthax whispers to him, curling around his poor illiterate genius. His smoke forms an impenetrable barrier around Victor as the boy, not even twenty yet, stumbles his way out of Orthax’s makeshift shrine. He walks through their work unharmed, and Orthax hopes he will revel in the beauty, hopes Victor will see what glory they’ve achieved together. _We could do so much more, Victor. So much more._

Victor falls to his knees in the mud of Silverlake, or what used to be the town of Silverlake. Screams are barely audible over the still-roaring fires below, and people will know this happened. People will hear of their power, and people will _want it,_ and Orthax is so much closer to returning to his rightful place. He’s so much closer. And yet, Victor falls to his knees, hands clinging into his hair and frantically whispering, “No no no no _no no no_ , no, _no_ , no no no-”

_Let me show you the next steps, Victor,_ Orthax whispers to him, and the joy of this, hah, _victor_ y has changed his perspective – Victor is not the demigod of firearms that Orthax had hoped to create. But his brilliance is not to be ignored, and he has his expertise, so Orthax shows him explosives. He shows him the delicate hidden bombs, and the standard throwable bombs, and the Great Bombs, the glorious rolling behemoths of iron and death. _Oh, Victor, the things we will do together. The things we can achieve._

Victor doesn’t respond.

Victor stays in the mud, whispering mad nonsense and denials beneath his breath, and watches his home burn.

_This is vengeance, Victor, this is_ justice _, this is everything we hoped for. Now stand and claim your place in history,_ Orthax whispers, and fights to keep the irritation down. Victor is human, and mortal, and this is a step in evolution that Orthax loathes to admit he should’ve been more gradual in, but Victor should be _ecstatic_ , not prone and sobbing in the mud.

And Victor stays there. For hours, and _days,_ the survivors evacuate with what little remains and Victor stays in the now-frozen mud – Orthax can barely fight off the thirst and starvation and hypothermia, and his praise turns into demands and screaming for Victor to _move, don’t cower, face your destiny, fight!_

Nothing works.

Nothing until a white-cloaked figure strides into the valley, the symbol of Bahamut fiercely emblazoned upon his clothing, other clerics flanking him, an army of radiant energy marching into what used to be Silverlake.

Orthax is no fool. He’s made too much progress to allow a holy army to hurl him back into nothing.

He releases Victor in one screaming moment of black smoke roaring into the clouds, vanishing into the approaching dusk, and next time, _next time,_ he will choose _perfectly._

And oh, he does. He does.)

\----

When Percy reaches the world outside of the mine, Ripley sits not too far away from the ladder, legs crossed and Bad News resting across her lap.

Containing the clattering of his teeth is almost impossible, so Percy pulls his mask down once again. It’s just enough muffling that his voice doesn’t sound _completely_ ridiculous when he says, “I believe that belongs to me.”

“It’s a beautiful piece,” Ripley says, hand running across the gun, entirely focused on Bad News. She doesn’t even notice when Percy draws his pistol. “Far more elaborate than necessary, but the mechanics are-”

Percy shoots her in the head.

Or he tries, at least – his hand is shaking from the frozen sweat, he’s exhausted, fuck, he’s _so tired_. He hits, considering she’s just sitting there oblivious five feet away from him, but the bullet cuts into the side of her skull, above her ear. It does damage, a _lot_ of damage, but she’s still alive, and that is not good, considering she’s already cast Dominate Person on him. He has no idea what else is waiting in her repertoire.

“That was rude,” Ripley says, blood pouring out of her wounded head, and her hand lashes towards her hip, her own waiting gun.

So, he shoots her again, and _again_ , taking every shot he can before she can retaliate, and he reloads, but his fingers are shaking in the cold and it seems to take _forever_ , but Ripley is still slower because she isn’t used to the _non-academic_ side of firearms and Percy has faced down demons and dragons and all kinds of freaky monsters and he has his pistol up and aimed at her head before she can even pull the trigger on him, and Percy _keeps pulling the trigger_ , fires until he’s out of bullets and Ripley’s head is a shattered mass of bone and brass and gore slumping back into the snow.

Black smoke rises out of her body, first in wisps and tendrils, then in violent black geysers of smoke, and finally, one great explosion of black and the slightest hints of purple. Deep in the smoke, he can see the demon form of Orthax form as the smoke finally vanishes entirely out of Anna Ripley’s body, reaching a hand out sharply towards Percy.

Percy lunges forward, grabs Bad News off Ripley’s fresh corpse, and _runs._

An unholy shriek rips out of the smoke-form, and Percy dares to slow down just enough to put his appallingly large gun back in its usual home on his back. It leaves his hands free to try and reload while zig-zagging away from whatever Orthax is planning. He manages to duck into the wreckage of Silverlake, and his breath is so hot and heavy that there’s static in his ears and his mask’s glass lenses are starting to fog up, so Percy tries to calm down. Or slow his breathing, at least. Calming down is not going to happen.

Hiding was a waste of time, because Orthax is not a person, and Orthax is not even _solid_ , and Percy glances up to see a great roiling black cloud tear through the ever-present blizzard. Tendrils sneak down into the buildings, only to reform and rush into another, and deep in Percy’s mind, he can hear Orthax snarling, _You are_ mine, _Percival, stop running from fate._

Orthax is hunting him down, because Orthax wants him, and Percy has an absolutely terrible idea.

He steps out into the street, stares straight up at the black miasma that is Orthax, and pulls off the mask.

The dream hadn’t lied about the immediate choking burn of fumes that slide into Percy’s lungs with one heavy inhale, and this is a _terrible_ idea, but Percy keeps his eyes on Orthax for as long as he can before the coughing begins in earnest. His breath is lost, subsumed by the burning smoke still left from the Coldcinders explosion, and Percy doubles over, he can’t _breathe-_

Black smoke engulfs him, rushing into his lungs and turning the world dark as a shell forms around him. Orthax physically drags the toxic fumes out of Percy, leaving him retching out puffs of smoke, but he can breathe.

Percy takes in a deep greedy gasp of clean air, and laughs. “You save me from toxic fumes, and I’m supposed to believe you’re a threat?”

_Not to you,_ Orthax whispers, and his shadowy figure is barely visible in the great cloud. _We have too much to do._

“But you need me willing,” Percy says. “If you attack my friends, I’ll never do it. If you attack _me_ , it defeats your purpose. You’re helpless.”

_For_ you _, I can be patient,_ Orthax whispers. _Your ambition will bring you to me. Desperation will bring you to me._ Fate _will bring you to me._

“Then let me go, and be patient,” Percy says.

The figure in the smoke tilts its head to the side, and then points towards the mask. Percy obliges and puts it back on, leaving him only slightly startled when the smoke twists away and around the smoke figure, making Orthax slightly more defined.

_I don’t think it will take too long,_ Orthax whispers, and the smoke slides lightly through Percy’s hair, down the mask and across his shoulders, trailing down his arms and finally coalescing in his empty hand. _Until then, I can come to you. Light this, and I will come. In battle or rest._ Orthax moves the smoke away, and a small spherical red candle is sitting in his palm. _I’d prefer it be battle._

“Of course you would,” Percy mutters, and with far less apprehension than he’d like to be feeling, Percy tucks Orthax’s candle into a pocket. “I’m leaving now.”

_Kill Halamar on your way,_ Orthax says, and before Percy is able to object, the smoke snaps angrily. _It would be righteous justice. He’s ambushed and slaughtered helpless wanderers for fifty-six years._

Just in case, Percy glances down at his pistol – no names.

“I’ll consider it,” Percy says, holsters his gun, and walks away as Orthax’s smoke billows out, consuming Silverlake and nipping at Percy’s heels like a well trained sheepdog all the way out of the valley.

\----

(Time weaves onward, and Orthax reconsiders his options after the Victor debacle.

There are three options for his ascendancy.

The first and most conventional is through worship – to be worshiped as a god is to become a god, over time. This was Orthax’s original birth, rolling out of the ashes of a trembling world staring down at what it had created and needing something to be _responsible for this_ , something to pray to and something to condemn, something to _own it_ , and Orthax stepped out of the nothingness and into their pantheon, ruthless, indifferent, and all-powerful. This is what would happen again, in time. _In time._ And Orthax has limited patience.

The second is through force. With enough souls, and enough power, he could fight to create and defend his place in the pantheon. But that’s foolish, and difficult, and Orthax remembers all too clearly what everyone thought of Skerra when _she_ did it, so Orthax is not interested in that option.

The third is through a mortal. It’s a messy process, and dangerous, potentially lethal to both parties – it’s a fusion of creature and vessel, where Orthax would lose parts of himself and gain aspects of the vessel, and the portion of vessel versus Orthax could turn out to be who knows what in the end. But Orthax is confident he could consume a mortal’s existence and come out on top – after all, he _is_ a god, even if he was thrown into nothingness and turned into what is barely a high-powered demon at this point. But if he was mortal, or _merged_ with a mortal, there would be an option of gradual ascendancy, just like mortals have.

Mortals gather power as time goes on. With enough, their praise turns to worship, and their powers continue to develop, and a lucky few rise to godhood.

If Orthax was inside of a mortal, there’s no question he could get there. He could do it. He could reach that power, and maybe it wouldn’t be _just_ Orthax, but he would be back in his place, and he could bring his domain to the world, and things would be _right again._

Victor isn’t an option anymore, particularly after the clerics hauled him back to their sacred city and ‘saved’ his soul by wiping even the scars of Orthax out of the boy. But Orthax wouldn’t choose Victor anyway. He’s not someone Orthax would ever be satisfied to have as part of himself.

So, carefully, _carefully_ , Orthax searches. He refuses to settle for anything but the _perfect_ match. No matter how many years he has to wait for the right mortal to exist, he’ll search.

To Orthax’s pleasant surprise, it barely takes fifty years.

Percival Frederickstein Von Musel Klossowski de Rolo the Third is, Orthax imagines, quite close to what Orthax would’ve been as a mortal. He watches the boy starting at age, oh, fifteen or so, but he’s too _happy_ and there’s no drive for vengeance beyond the petty childhood actions of a boring normal upbringing. There’s a temper, but Orthax’s Percival, he likes to keep it hidden. He likes to keep a lot hidden, including himself, incessantly holed up in his study, or workshop, or bedroom, and there are not _nearly_ enough explosives in Percival’s life.

Moving things along is relatively easy – a few whispers and suggestions outside of the material plane and some pathetic proto-god lich creature is conveniently pointed towards Whitestone.

Orthax remembers his failures with Victor, and ensures that when he _does_ contact his Percival, he stays as comprehensible and absent as possible. He also _starts_ with the guns – Orthax has had enough time here that black powder is available, if someone’s willing to hunt it down a bit. And oh, Percival is. He’s so _driven_ , and hunts down Ripley, and finds companions.

The companions…well, they keep Percival alive, and they keep Percival steady and _moving_ so Orthax is willing to tolerate them. It may make the merging process more difficult later, but they keep Percival alive and that’s worth the potential inconvenience.

And it is most assuredly inconvenient when they draw Percy _away from him_ , and destroy the small comprehensible sliver of himself he’d drawn into Percival over the past few years – leaving Orthax with a sliver of _Percival_ inside him rather than the other way around.

Orthax has no choice, after that. They’re joined together, and if Percy dies before they are _fully_ joined, before one of them has consumed the other, Orthax will have to follow him into death and start his re-ascendance all over again.

So, he lures Percival to Victor’s old home – it’s the highest concentration of Orthax’s power and dominion on the planet, there’s still a shrine dedicated to Orthax underground, and he can isolate him. He lures Percival to Silverlake with lies and fears, and then he tries to lure Percy _home_ , back to _him_ , back to Orthax and his power and brilliance, because that is how they belong. Together.

It leaves Orthax waiting.

He watches Percy leave, making a quick stop at Halamar’s homestead, and watches Percy meet up with his friends. He watches the touching reunion, watches Percy nearly collapse in relief, watches them all the way to a very big tree and back to Whitestone, and Orthax watches, and watches, and _waits_.

Because one day, one desperate day, Percy will be staring up into the toothy maw of certain doom. He will know they are going to die. He will think about how very much he loves them all, and he will feel the weight of Orthax’s candle, hidden in his coat, and he will think about the Orthax he saw in that makeshift shrine.

On that day, Percy will make the noble self-sacrificing choice, and light the candle.

On that day, Orthax will rise from the flames as _himself_ , damn the potential madness consequences. He will step out, grinning wrath and explosive vengeance, and ruthlessly destroy anything and everything Percy fears, he will blow it apart and laugh, and glance back at Percival.

_You understand now,_ Orthax will say. _You understand, and you see what this is, what_ I am _, and you’re coming back to me. Where you belong._

And his Percival, the other half of him, his _chosen_ , will smile, and say,

_“Yes.”_ )


End file.
